Kuona at 17 | Page 24

18 section2: Discovery A Person in Charge of a Museum, Art Collection… Nairobi as a vibrant cultural capital is filled with art theorists, art critics, and of course the quack artist who infiltrates the arts waiting for an opportunity to open up. In a time when world economics are so unpredictable, people are turning their hands to many different things for both fame and fortune. When it comes to the Kenyan art scene, a number of ‘artists’ have been seen to adopt curatorial roles to tap in on the funding that is available in Africa for the more sophisticated elements of the arts. This is merely economically motivated and in my opinion will never take Kenyan art to the heights we all want for it. Curatorial practice in Kenya is still in its infancy. Working as an artist in Kenya for the last 17 years, I can comfortably say that this is one aspect of the Kenyan art scene that needs addressing. There is a very small number of credible curators who have done this and that, and are mostly foreigners resident in Kenya. The local curators, in my view, are selective and only confined to artists who serve their purposes and those of their funders in a field that, I believe, will never work: art and development, or, 18 art as a tool for development. Before going further, I think it is important to make a clear distinction: the term “artist/curator” is employed here to describe artists who curate. This function may be purely pragmatic, for instance, if there is no one else to do the job in the cases of exhibitions like Art & Graft (Michael Soi), Stereotypes 1(Kamicha John) and Ziba Ufa (Peterson Kamwathi), or if they perceive a distinct gap in the work being presented and exhibited by other curators and institutions. The presentation of the three exhibitions mentioned, held at Kuona Trust, was interesting in the fact that the above three artists did not want to be described as “curators” but rather as people who put up a group of practicing Nairobi artists and created work that was themed. They would rather be seen as facilitators because we all know the responsibilities and weight that comes with the term “curator”. The term “artist/curator” can also be used to describe the work of artists who employ curatorial impulses, gestures and practices into their projects: for instance, gathering and displaying the work of other artists, and providing interpretive frameworks such as didactic texts or publications as was the case with Peterson Kamwathi and the exhibition, Ziba Ufa. I personally believe Peterson is one of Kenya’s most promising artists,